The Men in her Life

saying.
    He looked at the lolly, then at her, shrugged his shoulders and put it in his mouth.
    ‘Pity to waste it,’ he said.
    She almost told him not to speak while he was eating.
    He began to collect his various bits and pieces from around the room.
    ‘I didn’t mean you had to go now,’ she said, suddenly regretting what she had said, but not regretting it enough to try to change it.
    He stopped and looked at her and then said, with great dignity, ‘ “When the curtain falls, it’s time to leave the stage
    She tried to place the quote. She knew she knew it, but she didn’t know where it was from.
    He stuffed T-shirts into his small backpack, then went to the bathroom to get his toothbrush.
    ‘You couldn’t lend me a tenner for my fare,’ he asked, ‘I’ll pay you back.’
    She took the money from her wallet.
    ‘You don’t have to pay me back,’ she said, ‘is ten enough?’
    ‘I’ll hitch.’
    ‘You will be careful,’ she said, like a worried mother.
    ‘I’ll be careful,’ he said, smiling with his sloping eyes.
    ‘You are very beautiful,’ she told him, with nothing to lose. She would have liked to have taken a picture of him to somehow prove that he had been there.
    ‘You’re not so bad yourself,’ he told her, and turned to go. She couldn’t work out whether he was happy or sad, probably a bit of both, she thought, just as she was. He began to walk down the stairs.
    ‘Matt?’ she called after him.
    He turned.
    ‘How did you get your hair to go like that?’ she asked him.
    ‘It’s wax...’
    ‘No, I don’t mean the wax, I mean the colour. How did you get it to look as if you’d been turned upside down and dipped in gold?’
    ‘I bleached it. It grew out.’ He looked at her as if to say, is that it, any more questions?
    ‘Ahh.’
    He shrugged and turned again, and this time she did not call him back.
    Her eyes blurred with tears as the front door closed. She stared at the empty stairwell for a couple of seconds, then ran into her room and hung out of the window to watch him walking off down the street. He did not look round. At the bottom he turned left and was gone. Then suddenly she remembered where his parting quote had come from. It was what John Major had said when he resigned after the election.
    Good God, thought Holly, I thought I was in love with a boy whose idea of sophistication is to quote John Major. What the hell has become of me?

Chapter 28

    Ella was monosyllabic, which was usually an indication that she was angry, or about to cry. Clare was finding it difficult to drag information out of her. The induction course had gone well enough. Yes, she had made friends. One or two. The family she was allocated to were fine. They lived in a suburb quite a long way from the city. The house was very nice. Her room was very nice. The children were very nice. She couldn’t talk much, she said, meaning that whatever she said could be overheard.
    Clare tried to cheer her up telling her the funny things that Tom was now saying, then hearing his best bons mots repeated, Tom insisted on talking to his sister himself, and when Clare managed to wrestle the phone back from him she heard Ella sniff, and knew that she was on the verge of homesick tears.
    ‘We’re all fine here,’ she said, not knowing how to comfort her daughter at so great a distance.
    Ella asked if she had seen Matt.
    ‘No, I haven’t. Shall I give him your number? OK. And I’ll ring you. It’s not that expensive. And you ring if you need to. Reverse the charges. I love you.’
    Clare replaced the receiver feeling vaguely unsettled. She had imagined Ella happy and she had sounded sad. Remembering with wincing clarity Ella punching the air as she left the house and shouting ‘I’m outta here!’ she had wanted to convey to her somehow that she too Was outta here. Not physically, but mentally. Yet when she had heard Ella’s small voice bouncing across three thousand miles of ocean, she felt less confident.
    Through the open back door, Clare watched Tom making mud pies in the garden. He had learned to turn the tap on the rain tank and could amuse himself for hours filling his yellow plastic watering-can and emptying it. She picked up the receiver again and dialled wanting to speak to somebody, if only Holly’s answer-phone, but even though it was early in the evening, Holly answered.
    ‘It’s Clare.’
    ‘Oh, hi! Look, I’m so sorry I haven’t returned any of your calls, I’ve been so